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Action learning is being used increasingly as a primary method for building leadership skills and improving leadership behavior. This article discusses the emergence of action learning as a methodology for developing leaders and how action learning is effective in developing and sustaining leadership skills and behavior. A comparison of the effectiveness of action learning to other methodologies currently used to develop leadership competencies is presented. Furthermore, the article illustrates how action learning can be tailored to develop specific leadership competencies identified by individual action learning team members while, at the same time, developing other leadership skills needed in contemporary organizations. Four case examples illustrate how action learning built leadership competencies at the U.S. Department of Commerce, Boeing, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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s noted in chapter 1, the challenges and demands that organizations face today require a broader range of leadership skills than were required in previous eras. In addition to the directive and transactional (motivating through the use of rewards) leadership skills so useful in the past, successful leaders in contemporary organizations display leadership styles that engage people's values, passion, and desire to achieve great things (i.e., transformational leadership) as well as empower people to take more responsibility for self-leadership in their decision making. Pearce et al. (2003) provided convincing evidence that CEOs demonstrate all of these leadership skills in their stewardship of contemporary organizations.Leadership Development Pearce and Conger (2003) noted that leadership in contemporary, technology-rich organizations has shifted from traditional hierarchical, top-down leadership to more lateral, collaborative, and shared leadership approaches. Chapter 10 provides consistent evidence that Action Learning (AL) 83